Embedded - 131: Carve Me a Duck

Episode Date: December 24, 2015

Sarah and Abi Hodsdon speak with us about being a maker family.  Sarah's site and blog are Sarahndipitous Designs, her twitter handle is @sarahndipitous. The online K-12 school they use is Connections Academy. Making Makers by AnnMarie Thomas is a book about encouraging kids toward making.  Backyard Ballistics by William Gurstelle is an excellent addition to any library. Giwishes is a massive global scavenger hunt. Some learning sites the Hodsdon's recommend include: Code Academy Kahn Academy Instructables For e-textiles and wearables, they recommend: Lynne Bruning's eTextile Lounge Becky Stern Leah Buechley's Sew Electric book

Welcome to Embedded FM. I'm Elysia White here with Christopher White. For many people around the world, this is a holiday time, which means family. This week I have Sarah Hodgson and her daughter, Abby, to talk about how a family that makes together is just better. Hello, Sarah and Abby. Welcome to the show. Hi. Hello. Sarah, could you Abby. Welcome to the show. Hi. Hello.

Sarah, could you tell us a bit about yourself? Well, I'm a jack of all trades. So I work for the craft and hobby industry, and I actually design, invent, and create content. That's my real job, sort of. And then my passion is working with young makers, specifically Maker Faire and being an advocate for handwriting and literacy with BIC. Although I don't really work with them formally as an employee, I'm just kind of an advocate because I work with at-risk youth

in my volunteer time. And I also mentor at the Kettering University FIRST Community Center as one of their FIRST robotics coaches. So we kind of goof around all day. Make and break stuff is pretty much our modus operandi. Yeah, that's what we do. Abby, how do you introduce yourself? I am a 11-year-old hack schooler, and I like e-textiles and sewing and other cool electronic stuff that is fun to do in spare time. Which, with hack schooling, you have a lot of because you can just get your schoolwork done by around noon and then go to the maker shop and everywhere else and just learn whatever you want to. I am looking forward to talking a lot more about that.

But before we do that, I want to do a lightning round. The goal of this round is for you to answer things with one word answer. And Sarah, do feel free to chime in. I know that you're sharing a mic between you, so there might be a little bit of quietness there, but we can fix that. Where we is, Christopher. Oh my God, he just totally rolled his eyes at me. You should have seen it. Okay, so lightning round.

Just answer quickly and we'll get through as many questions as we can. Okay. What's your favorite programming language? C++. Not my favorite. What's your favorite software keyword then? Well, I don't really have a favorite. They're all pretty fun.

It's totally a one-word answer. Sorry. That's, it's totally a one word answer. Sarah, what programming language should kids learn first? I would think C++. I actually never learned computers until I was in my 20s. So I kind of stuck to that. Although it really depends on what the kids want to do with it. So I just, I basically told the kids C++ first, and then you can learn everything else. And everything else has been experimented with here. So I know it's not one word answer, but...

I was going to say, Abby's better at the one word answers. No way! Child does well! Sarah, at what age should kids get their own solder and iron? I'd say seven. Abby, what age do you think it should be? Probably about five. Art or engineering? Is there a difference?

All right. Have you seen the new Star Wars movie? No. No spoilers, please new Star Wars movie? No. No spoilers, please. Alright. I promise. No spoilers. It was really good.

I can recite the whole thing now. What is most important to your day? A soldering iron, a keyboard, a pencil, or scissors?

Well, where's the sewing machine? Alright. Sorry. Why is there not a sewing machine in that list um hacking or making making favorite online store um online store you can get a whole bunch of stuff on amazon all right well too bad they're not sponsoring us.

Probably Adafruit or Code Academy. Rate school on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is bad and 10 is awesome. 8.5. That's pretty good. What is better than a robot? A sewing machine or a telescope. All right. Probably a telescope.

What if we attached a sewing machine and a telescope to a robot? That would probably be the best robot I've ever seen in my entire life. What would that do? I'm not exactly sure. That would be a very strange-looking robot. I mean, you could use the sewing machine gears to autofocus a telescope. That's true. You could do that. Um,

yeah, okay, that's all I had for lightning round. Do you have any more, Christopher? Um, no. No, alright. But you have seen the old Star Wars movies, right? Yes. Leia or R2-D2? Mom in the background is just like empire strikes back for the win

probably r2d2 yeah i know mom's just looking at me like you failed no no i i totally understand. Okay, so you said hack schooling in your introduction. Yes. What is hack schooling? It's kind of like, it's basically an online school. And it's, I don't really know how to explain it. Well, you can always just hand the microphone back to Sarah. Yeah, she can probably explain that a lot better. But take it back if you need it. She will definitely take it back. This child has no problem with that whatsoever. We were talking about hack schooling.

Basically, there's lots of different ways to do this, right? Traditional homeschoolers, the mother does most of the curriculum planning or whoever's staying at home, mentor, grandparents, guardians, et cetera. I have a love-hate relationship with curriculum. So I actually know why hamsters eat their young. So I don't really want to be a homeschooling parent because, you know, there is a time when they're going to move out of the house and I actually want to correspond, have dinner, those kinds of things. Homeschooling basically for us, and at Maker Faire, I've spoken about this before, it takes on different ways for different families. Most people would see that, let's say a professional athlete or a musician, where you would have a tutor that follows around those kids and they teach those kids. That's hack schooling because basically

you're taking the tools that we have access to, whether it's programs online or tutors and stuff. And we cobble together what it is that we need to be well-educated. There are people that unschool. There are people that order a curriculum online. For us personally, we go to Connections Academy, which is in all 50 states. And they're an accredited public school. So basically the same curriculum that you would get in your brick and mortar school, we have to follow. So in Michigan, we have Common Core, boo hiss, boo hiss. But it's one of those things that I have a hard time with, but we give them to CESAR. So the kids, they have about 14 or 15 classes every single day. And our kids happen to be, we call it GT, gifted and talented. But I look at them and say,

you're not gifted or talented. I know that's harsh, but at the same time, it's like, no, you're going to do the studies that you're going to do that you're capable of at that point. If it's an advanced class, so be it. But it's one of those things that they take a lot of different classes. Abby's, I think she has one high school class now. But what's interesting about a hack schooler is that there are no boundaries, right? So you progress at the level that you want to progress at. And it's kind of interesting when you think about it.

Once upon a time, if you wanted to go to Harvard or MIT, you had to be accepted there. Now, these kids, there's no barrier to entry. If Abby has a question for a professor at MIT because of some technology she's interested in, she can just Skype them. She can Twitter. She can Facebook. She can Instagram. And she has instant access to the greatest minds. And it's one of those self-initiated kinds of education.

You know, we're not following a specific curriculum necessarily. We are in the morning. But when the kids are done, and I told them, once you're done with your stuff, you've got all afternoon to do the real learning. And they fill their days at different makerspaces and hackerspaces. They goof off over at the library or, yeah, a lot at the library. A lot at, you know lot at places like Tech Shop or we have I3 Detroit here in MakerWorks or just on set with me. And that's where they really get to rub elbows.

It's more like a Montessori life. Montessori classrooms don't have barriers or grade levels per se. You have stations in life and our kids are really blessed in that way because we're surrounded by makers, tinkers, people that do things. I call them the doers of did. And we have hacked our schooling. We've made it what our kids need. I mean, Abby would never be able to learn wearable technology in her STEM-based brick-and-mortar school.

They don't have drone academies. They don't have, for instance, Noah. He doesn't like to talk very much, but he's as snarky as the other two. You know, we live on 10 acres. Three acres of our property are dedicated to his agricultural pursuits. He works over at Michigan State University. He raises chickens, even though he doesn't eat meat. He'll also grow hops for a local artisan up north.

How old is Noah? Noah is 13, and Ben is 15. Noah is a very interesting character. You have to kind of... When you get all three of them in a room, they complement each other in a very interesting character. You have to kind of, when you get all three of them in a room, they compliment each other in a very interesting way. But he is a man of the dirt. And I think that's one of the other things that is a misconception with maker kids is that we assume that they have to be techie, right? Our kids are all techie, but they used what they've learned, not just engineering, mathematics.

Like, for instance, the Arduino, right? Our kids rigged up the chicken coop door so that they can keep track of all 60 chickens. And our kids, Abby's like 63, but they figure out what chickens are laying, what chickens aren't. They also use those eggs. They go to their neighbor who's in her 80s and they trade. They say, hey, you can have some of our eggs. If you teach us how to, I don't know, she had a spindle one time. She knew how to tat, which is kind of embroidered.

Go ahead. Which is making lace. Lace, yeah, lacework and textiles. And it's interesting because they're bartering skills. And I think that's the missing piece. When you're saying hack schooling, it's hacking your own learning, your ability to continuously learn new things. And it's not just maker kids, maker parents, guardians, mentors, aunts, uncles, friends of the family. We kind of have to be committed to transferring our skills. I know

we had talked about that before, but we're coming into this interesting time where automation and AI and this whole singularity thing that the kids keep talking about. We have to know how to code. Abby and I were talking about that this morning, that why is coding important? She's kind of rolling her eyes. She's like, okay, in Roman times, we had to learn Latin. It's the language of the future. We have to know how to code.

It doesn't mean that I like it. I have to learn a foreign language or I have to learn a universal language. So in that aspect, she's like, in order to communicate with the AI that's going to take over the world, yeah, they want to be the human ambassadors, the code talkers. So it is kind of one of those things that for me, I'm, don't tell anybody, 42 almost, which, did you hear? I don't know if you heard Abby. She's like, 42, answer to the life, universe, and everything. Everybody knows this. 42 is a very big number in our house.

Hit check your sky to the galaxy. Yes, indeed. If you have not read that, ladies and gentlemen, you have to read that. So we're going to have a big party here for my 42nd. I still don't think I'm going to have all the answers to the universe. So other than that, go ahead. Homeschooling, hack schooling. Yeah.

It's a huge parental commitment. Yes, it is. But so is childbearing you know it's like um it's a huge commitment there's no question about it our house uh on any given tuesday is much more myth buster science fair than it is pottery barn um hack schooling homeschooling families have science technology on the kitchen table all the time. You have to become very, very good at spackle, drywall, fire extinguishers. I still think two of my favorite projects of all time, air jousting, very fun, going to kill the kids. And the ground bee war. When I came home, I came home and the kids were in the front lawn with my vacuum cleaner, sucking up ground bees.

It was great. Ground bees? Yeah. These are bees that live on the ground. Underground, yes, yes. This is what happens with maker kids because, you know, I call it the collective stupid. You get three kids that are wickedly smart and you put and I look out my second story window and I see the child in hockey gear on the zip line going past my window with a broom handle. On the zip line. On the zip line. Yes. This is air jousting. Yes.

And so I'm looking out the back and I'm like, you know, you don't have words for this because you're supposed to act so professional. You know, I am on the board of directors for, you know, the Craft and Hobby Association. And I'm supposed to be, you know, all, you know, yes, this, yes, that. Very cool. Yeah. And I'm watching my child go by with hockey gear floating through the air with this absolute grin on her face. And I thought, I ran outside afterwards and Ben's just looking at it going, mom, we had the stopgap and everything.

We're professionals. It was very bad. But I'll let you talk to Abby about her experience as a hack schooler, because I think for parents, their view is completely different. I'm a dictator with our kids and they'll be the first one to tell you. You have a job as a parent. And I've told the kids, I can't be your friend, or you can't be my friend and a dependent at the same time. And it's kind of one of those weird dichotomies. You start thinking about it,

that in order to raise children that can think for themselves, it's going to break your heart. If you do it right, they're never going to need you, but they're going to want you around. And so it is kind of one of those things that you think about that I know that the world could take everything away from my kids, absolutely everything, burn the house to ground. I hope they don't do that. But if it happens, I'm really confident that they're well-adjusted because they know that they can, with the skills that they have, they can build anything they want. And that's important nowadays, you know? The resilience and the self-sufficiency.

Yeah. And you know what? The other thing, too, I think that is really unique about maker families in general is they embrace failure. And it's not the way you think, because we are all tiger moms. I mean, I expect my kids to ace calculus, because that's the way moms are. But the crashes and booms and literally, I'm not joking about, you know, drywall. That's a legit concern around here. We have a great Dane puppy and we have three almost teenagers. You know, that says it all right there. Yes, yes, it does. You pretty much, and it's kind of funny too, because we're under so much pressure nowadays with always constantly being on. You know, I'm sorry, I'm not a Kardashian.

I don't know sculpting very well. I don't know contour. You know, I'm not a person that wears, you know, makeup and has to be on, has to do this. Your family, when you think about it, you're judged by the way your house looks. And if you're a homeschooling mom, if your kids fail miserably, the moms take that personally.

I know a lot of moms, they get very bent out of shape. If their kids are failing, it's a direct consequence or it looks poor upon the parents. And that simply is not the case. You have to let your kids fail. If my kids crash and burn, that is the best learning experience I can give them. For life, for everything else, they have to have that resilience, that get up and go. And we laugh a lot around here. I mean, if you read the Twitter feed, I do have to kind of sanitize some of it sometimes. But you just sit there and laugh because that's what makes us human.

In order, we tell the kids on the robotics team, in order to build better bots, we have to have better humans. Otherwise, we're not going to, you know, push the envelope a little bit further. Our humanity is really captured on the timeline of history in our fingerprints. That's what makes us unique is that, you know, you got all these fingerprints. They're not necessarily to keep track of us and where we've been. It's who's touched our lives, you know, And I think making things by hand is where we find our humanity. And our kids are really blessed that way. We actually had to teach them all of the craft first. They learned metal work and woodwork, leather work, textiles before they went into kindergarten.

And I never let them use kid tools, ever. Because you can't let a kid know, yeah, what you're doing is actually kid work. No, it's not. It's work. You know, work is work. And you use the best stuff and you get the best example and the best work back, you know. And I think our kids are like that. But I'll let you talk to ab so she can

fill you in on all the dirty little details that's what 11 year olds do yeah abby what classes are you taking now um there's stuff on code academy i'm thinking i'm taking c plus python um what's the other one j Java, JavaScript. There's a couple more that I forgot the name of because, yeah. What about school classes? Oh, there's math, literature. What kind of math? I think I'm doing high school math.

You're doing algebra 2. Algebra 2. I don't know what that qualifies as now. 11, which is normally in the U.S. 6th grade, and high school usually starts at 12th? Not sure. 11th grade? What, algebra 2? No, when does high school start?

What is the grade level? 9. 9, okay. Cool. 9th grade. And so that's usually 14, 15. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Ninth grade. And so that's usually 14, 15. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So I'm just trying to, so that's, what about reading and all of that? You mentioned hitchhikers, so you probably do read some. Yes. I read quite a bit. I have, I think, I don't really know exactly

how it started. I thought, I think it was for Christmas. I got one of the Nancy Drew books, and I just completely fell in love with the series. And now I have every single one of them. So I've read all of them. They're nice. I like them. And now I'm bored because I don't have any more. Oh, there are lots of good books out there.

Yeah. Oh, and sad books. Red Fern Grows. Other sad books that I didn't enjoy reading very much, but like Old Yeller. Yeah, and you have to read those, but you get past them and then you go back to fun stuff. Yes, agreed.

Why do you like homeschooling? Don't you miss other kids? Not really. I mean, in normal classrooms, I guess it's more of a distraction I mean and for recess and stuff I do have actual live lessons specifically for talking to other students and there's more field trips than you usually have at a brick and mortar school which is amazing because that's fun I get to go on lots of field trips like um oh we went to the Kalamazoo air thing i forgot exactly what it's called air zoo i think and we had the little imagining pandas flying around yeah little pod things uh so what do you

want to be when you grow up is that the most annoying question? Useful is one main thing. It's always nice to be useful. Lots of stuff with e-textiles. And I think that being something in terms of NASA would also be fun. Space stuff, rovers, planets planets yeah solar system that's always fun you're gonna get to galaxy soon i think yeah what about college do you want to go to college or you want to go work more with your hands well i'm kind of already doing not like full-on college classes but i've been working with some

of the people that teach college classes and i guess kind of learning off of them so i think it would be a good investment to go to college, I guess. I guess. What are you planning for the next Maker Faire? For the next Maker Faire, I think every year by about January 1st, we've already decided a different project, kind of like a hands-on project that we do so for this year or technically next year sort of for 2016 we were probably yes we were probably going to do either leather work or glass glass i've done some. Hot molten glass is the best. I know. But it is a little on the dangerous side. Actually, many of the things that your mother mentioned seem a little on the dangerous side.

Yes. Does that just make it better? I'm not entirely sure. I guess it's kind of like, it's like kids don't feel like they're trying to be coddled too much. It's like they have a chance to actually do what other people can do. And it's like, it's kind of like a respect for tools. How do you mean that it's kind of i guess like when you have a pair of those little tiny kids scissors that are barely sharp and you can't really do much with them and you give those to a toddler they're thinking oh well why do they get to use the massive scissors that look really sharp and pointy? And I get these ones that don't do anything. It's kind of like they're thinking that they're being almost coddled too much. And it's kind of weird, I guess.

It is hard to be coddled, but safety is a thing. I mean, have you used a glory hole in the big glass blowing stuff? No. And have you done the littler torch glass stuff? Once or twice. done the littler torch glass stuff? Once or twice. So you can

get pretty hurt by that, by touching the molten glass or by having it fall or being careless and hurting someone else. Mm-hmm. Yes. You have to know what you're doing a little bit or you have to have somebody there to watch out for all of these variables.

Yeah, I guess. But mom wants to add something on to that. Okay. I'm sitting here listening, and I'm like, I had an interesting conversation with Anne-Marie Thomas. She has an amazing book called Making Makers. And we were sitting on a panel. And the question of danger comes up a lot. Of course. Usually for me, I know, right? For Maker Faire, we don't do any major project that's going to

totally hurt somebody. But I will tell you this, two years ago, we did stamp carving, and the kids actually used linoleum cutters. And we had a four-year-old that actually did this and didn't cut themselves. I think we did the project 15,000 times, a little bit over that. I think that's how many erasers we went through that year. And you would be amazed if you go and you look at a child face to face now this this is something different to make our kids are completely different than I would not be able to do these kinds of projects in a brick and mortar school partially because we don't have the undivided attention of those kids classroom management is a big deal and I know I'm probably stepping on some people's toes by thinking this. But when you look at these kids, it used to be part of our curriculum that linoleum cutters were used about six or seven.

And you'll ask a grandparent, they'll say, oh, my gosh, I totally remember doing this in first and second grade. And I said, well, why didn't you teach your own first and second grader? Well, it's too dangerous for them. And you ask yourself, well, what made it so safe for you back then? It is one of those things that you have to poke your finger and whatnot. When we were thinking glasswork or thinking more stained glasswork, not fusing or doing anything like that, but either that or painting on with, you know,

they have new kinds of paints that work on glass. But we try to pick something of a material that's from that industrial revolution, the turn of the century, metal, glass, technology, or textiles, I should say, leather, wood, the traditional materials that built our country. A lot of the things that we do are with, you know, the Henry Ford. And they have Greenfield Village, which still does all of those traditional crafts. And I say not crafts like throwing glitter in the air, but crafts, you know, basket weaving and things like that. Abby is kind of an interesting kid because she grew up in the same way I did. My

grandmother is a classically trained, you know, artisan and she's a master of textiles. Abby never learned on a kid-sized sewing machine. She had to go there and she learned side by side with her grandmother. Did I teach her that? No. I know where my boundaries are. Like I told you, I know why hamsters eat their kids. That's We did metal work this year. And the metal, the metal could slice their fingers in a really interesting way. But if you make everybody at the table aware, I'm giving you dangerous tools, take it seriously. You know, this is another kind of controversial type thing, but we live on 10 acres. We live in a very rural area where we have dangerous animals. All of our kids, they have to learn firearms. And that's a very touchy subject, but they respect their tools.

You know, I tell Abby that, and I heard you kind of asking her, well, what does that mean? These kids don't see these as playthings. They're tools. And if you ask someone, let's say in the Great Depression era, what was the most valuable possession they had? It was their tools, because their tools were their only means of livelihood. If you lost your tools, you were unable to work. And, you know, their great-grandfather instills that in them all the time. If you go to, let's say, a Maker Faire in San Francisco, some of the most amazing people you'll meet there, they say the same thing. My tools are my work.

They're my livelihood. Our kids have a forge in the backyard. And that's kind of one of the things that you look at and say, I can't believe you're letting your 13 and 14-year-old at that time build a forge. No no i can see this actually i actually think this danger aspect while i'm sort of sounding like i'm opposed to it because of safety first or whatever yeah yeah i'm not i think that i learn better when things are at risk whether it's my job or whether it is um just wanting to get things done for a safety issue or wanting to understand how the ramifications of what I'm doing. Because if I do it wrong, someone may get hurt. Someone may be me, but it may not be. That safety aspect, I I think is important to

thinking about what you're doing. If you give me safety scissors, yeah, I'm just going to cut because I can. But if you give me a box cutter, I'm actually going to think about what I'm going to do before I start cutting, which is what you have to do to learn.

Well, it's like the difference between dull and sharp knives. A dull knife is often more dangerous than a sharp knife because you're going to be doing motions with it that aren't safe because it doesn't work very well. Well, the other thing too is that we live in a disposable culture. So, making things is meaningful. You have to be purposeful. You know, yeah, measure twice, cut once. There's a mindfulness when you're making something.

And I think that's a difference between, you know, throwing macaroni and glitter on the wall and saying, here, kid, I'm giving you a needle and a thread and I'm going to teach you how to quilt. It is one of those things that you pay attention to. And I think the art in craftsmanship, the art in making, I've seen bread boards that will make you weep. They're so beautiful. I mean, the care that people take in their soldering, there's an artistry in that. There's an artistry in coding, actually. I mean, you can code sloppily, or you can do something really, really good, because you can, not because you have to. And I think that ultimately is something that we have to marinate on. You know, we as a family, we're a gateway drug, right? So our kids can be uber geeky, there's no question about it. But I think when we say,

hey, we're going to do a project with no technology whatsoever, it becomes approachable. Because like, for instance, the metal work that we did this year, I was mentioning that it's kind of like CAD and 3D printing with no technology. Because we're taking this flat two-dimensional thing and we are working on both sides in order to make it three-dimensional. We cannot expect kids to understand 3D printing or understand a three-dimensional if they've never experienced

bringing something from flat to 3D. And I think that's one of the other things that as a maker mom, and I say that loosely because there are so many amazing moms that, you know, I am so blessed to have them in our world because they teach my kids things that I could only wish I had learned at their age. I have a debt of gratitude that I will never be able to pay it forward to. But it's one of those things that transfer your skills, share your skills. If it were not for these wonderful people taking my kids aside and saying, hey, you guys are going to learn programming.

Your parents actually don't know this, which is completely true. I mean, I seriously did not have a computer in my house until I was 20. And so, whereas my husband, he had technology from the get-go. And it is a learning curve, but you have to be committed to it. It does, the coding,

I just keep going back to coding aspect of it. That for me is like pulling teeth. It really is not one of my favorite things to do. I love soldering and I can do that all day. But the programming, I'm like, here, it will look beautiful. You will have this most amazing stuff, but I will let you program it. I want my kids to be well-rounded. So they're going to have to learn

all these little bits and pieces to get to their end game. Like for Abby, Abby learned how to sew first. She learned Vogue patterns. She learned just absolutely amazing fashion. And her sole mission for, I think, a whole entire summer last year was to basically make NASA pretty

because a lot of technology is ugly. So, you know, her drone, her drone has, you know, glittered wings. It's pretty terrifying. It's up in the tree right now because they still can't get it down. But it's one of those things that, you know, you look at and I'll give you a for an example and take it what you will. You know, this new generation, and I call them the echo boomers, they act like our great grandparents. You know, my grandfather came from Iron Mountain, hitchhiked with 12 bucks in his shoe, and, you know, had an eighth grade education, joined the military and came out of the military with three master's degrees.

You know, you have this kind of grit that is very foreign to the millennials because our kids, none of our kids have any expectations. When you asked the college question, I kind of laughed. Our kids have already started their own businesses. They're very entrepreneurial in nature. And they don't know if school's going to give them what they need to do with the stuff that they want. Abby's field of choice changes daily. But it always has something to do with wearable tech. There are no schools for her right now.

So, you know, when I hand over the mic, she'll tell you some of the people that she hangs out with online. And when she met them online or at Maker Faire first and then kept in contact with them, as a mom, I had to, that safety aspect was a major big deal. It's like, you met perfect strangers and now you're best friends with them. And they're talking in a language that I don't understand. So of course, protective mom has to learn that language, which is very unnerving because it means that I'm learning side by side with my kid and my kid actually knows more than I do.

Abby, we raise chickens or, you know, Noah does. And we had two chickens, baby chicks, because they send them to you in the mail that were not going to live. They were not going to live through the night. And I told Abby, it was a very hard lesson to learn. When you live on a farm, farm kids learn hard lessons. And there is no, it's a black and white issue. You live or you die, and sometimes animals die. And it's a very sad experience. And I told her they have to stay at 98 degrees. And we can't do that because they're not going to be under the light. The other ones are going to push them out. It's one of those things. She went upstairs and

she sewed an apron and she rigged it with Arduino. She called up her friend. And I don't know if it was Lynn Brunig at the time or maybe it was becky stern don't know which one kind of led her to an online video so she learns on youtube to figure out how to rig this apron she doesn't know any of the terms she doesn't know the physics of it she just knows she wants it to stay at this temperature to save her chicks. She comes down and she puts those chicks in her pocket and she carries them around as she does her live lessons, as she does everything else, just like her great-grandmother did in the olden days where they carry around the chicks in their pockets. They did it back then. Now she has the

technology to regulate it and darned if the chicks didn't live. The weirdest thing about this is that these kids are tremendous thinkers and doers. And it has to be something that means something to them. If you give them a project that has no meaning, they're not really going to, I'm not going to say they don't appreciate it it's just a disposable something but it means something to them and they have to work hard to get it that answer you know for her she had to dig a little deeper and figure out you know what needed to get done to get this done um it's an interesting thing. Go ahead. commute, how do they encourage this resilience and grit and usefulness in their children and stay safe? Well, that's a good question. I think there's an interesting balance, and I think it was

Ben Franklin that said, if you give up your liberty for safety, you're not going to get either. And that's kind of one of the things that there is this interesting balance between staying safe and having freedom. I am kind of, like I told you, a dictator around the house. They don't get as much freedom as most people think they do. But I think, too, it's a commitment. We can't parent by proxy. And I think a lot of times, and this is a really hard thing to think about, but we can't just send them to school and think that they're going to learn

automatically. We have to foster a culture within our own households, family units, et cetera, that cultivates that kind of unlimited curiosity. And I know a lot of single moms that fret, oh my gosh, am I going to screw up my kids? They don't have any other choice but to send them to school. And then come home at night, and it's usually seven or eight o'clock at night. They barely spend any time with their kids. You can embed opportunities. I'm not particularly fond of having to, let's say, karate, for instance. Karate was a major deal in our household because we do live a very public life. And we had a person come around with a drone taking pictures of the kids and freaking the heck out of me. And we realized that our kids were not safe when they're in a public

arena like that. When we teach so many people and, you know, there are some interesting folks out there that are not always good in their intentions. And as a family, we decided, you know what, let's just do this. Let's do this. And my code name is Beach Panda. And I am a karate goddess. I mean, it's awesome. But it's one of those things. We made a commitment as a family, as a family unit. My husband does it too.

And we don't bend on that. We don't bend on spending time at dinner. My husband works really late. We will wait till nine o'clock to have dinner because we want to make sure that that time is ours. And it is a commitment. Baking in, making opportunities. Podcasts like this are beautiful. You have no idea what a gift you are.

Most commutes are about two hours. So filling your mind with good information and really rich conversations. Our kids don't watch television. I know that sounds kind of strange because we're so tech-oriented. They're online with their teachers, but by and large, their spare time is spent out in the wild. It's forced fun. You have to get your vitamin D requirement. And if it means they're dangling from the trees, so be it. Going out for a walk, talking about what you see. It doesn't matter how old the child is. For me personally, you say I do a lot. I am really, I can't tell you how blessed.

With there being, let's say, Connections Academy, if they went to our brick and mortar school here locally, they'd have an excellent, you know, an excellent education. Oakland County schools are amazing. Blue Ribbon and everything else. But they would lack the diversity that they have online. Abby's in a class with 400 other people, 400 other people. And that's her language arts class. And her teachers know her better than her brick and mortar counterparts would because they have a different conversation. These kids are connecting in amazing different ways

and they're learning from each other. Don't discount that. But I also tell my kids too, I guess the takeaway, what makes us different or what can other parents take from this or mentors or grandparents is that, you know, one of the key things that we talk about here is be generous with everything you have, but be ruthless with your time. Absolutely ruthless because you can't get that time back. Decide what it is that you're willing to invest your time in. And for our kids, television is not one of those things. You ask them about pop culture, they would be hard pressed. I mean, I think Abby's favorite, I don't know, musician, they're all my mom's favorite musicians the kid has an excellent

taste in music you know she'll be bopping around here to the stones or to Ella Fitzgerald or whatever and the people that you know are on set with us they're 20 something year olds that have no idea who these people are and it's a shame you know they don't they have no taste in music. So sad, so sad. But it is what it is. You know, you have to share your skills. And that's the key. Go ahead. Your kids accept this.

I mean, they're your kids. They clearly have been indoctrinated. Yes, they have. No, I'm just kidding. But I mean, not in a bad way I mean this is great but uh like I was a very bookish kid so are our kids yeah and I failed at a lot of art projects before I decided I was not going to participate in that um and so I didn't really, I think, you know, from the time I was about six to the time I was in college and away from home, I really wasn't into any hand crafts because I just didn't, I wasn't good at them. And in college, I wasn't good at them, but apparently nobody else was good

at them. So it was fine. But when I was a kid, I didn't do that. I totally got lost in books. What advice do you have for parents whose kids are like that, who give up too soon because it's ugly? You know, there's an analogy. When I teach, I teach kids from five until those that still act like five, right? Which is very true. If I go to a classroom of five-year-olds and I say, who is an artist? Every single one of them lifts up their hands.

Middle school, I might get half. By high school, I'll get one or two. By the time they're 40-year-old women sitting in my classroom, I'll have one, if that. All right. We teach kids to go in and we're going to make a clown and everybody has to stick the nose right in the middle of the clown's face. And they all look really, really wonderful. And then little Johnny's has, you know, the nose in the middle of the forehead, and the child is ostracized for the rest of their world. And they won't dare to venture out. My husband is an introvert, and he's a beautiful, beautiful man.

And his third grade teacher said, you know what, I really don't like your voice. And so he stopped talking. And you look at these children. I think there's so much and, you know, there's so much that says you have to conform. You have to be, you know, this, this, this. You have to get the straight A. And these quirky kids, they're so beautiful. You have to embrace your inner qu kids, you're perfectly and wonderfully flawed. And art is not necessarily about the aesthetic of pleasing other people. It's the voice and it's the language of your soul. Art and music are universal, and they can't be ugly. I don't care what anybody says. You can have splatter paint like a Jackson Pollock.

There is somebody else out there that's going to look at that and go, oh my gosh, I am so inspired by this. One of the most selfish things that you can do is to hide your talent. Because there are 7 billion people in the world. And when you make, it's such a hard thing. I look at this and it makes my heart weep, really, that, you know, time is not going to remember me. History doesn't remember me. And they never will. It's a crying shame. History never remembers what we do. We are actually adhered to that timeline of history by how we touch other people. And, you know, as a bookish person like you are, like I was, you know, I was forced fun to have to be extroverted. But by nature,

when I'm in the studio, I am a total hermit. If I never had to leave, I would never leave. But I think, you know, embrace what it is that makes you unique, but never apologize, you know, for whatever it is that you create. Because like I said, those fingerprints, you know, Abby once, I don't know, she was probably six months ago, seven months ago, she had mentioned the fact that I refused to wash the window in the kitchen. And it was because the kids' fingerprints, you know, the kids hit this growth spurt. And all of a sudden you're like, whoa, you're a foot and a half taller than a kid. And I really wanted to keep those handprints on the window because I just, oh, it makes me so happy. But I do that with my students too. I have a wall

of fame here at the house that I think most people don't even know about. But it's the like noah i'm gonna grow hops this year um child you don't drink beer i know but i know how to grow hops that guy doesn't oh okay great more power to you kid and he you know grows the hops next to the lavender and you know we have a war between the mint and the horseradish that, you know, most kids will never experience. But that kid knows his stuff. You know your stuff. So as an instructor, my job is to be the mirror that shows you the beautiful that you are. And I think our kids, when we teach at Maker Faire, you would be so surprised how many people sit at the table and say, you know what?

I'm not crafty. I'm not artistic. I'm not handiwork. I'm not this. And you say, well, that's great. That's fine. But here's what you are. You have a unique voice. You have a unique experience. Please share that with me. And while we're here, let's make something. And then, you know, they go away with something incredible every time. Do you have to start this when your kid is young? I mean, when they're two? Or what if we have a listener out there whose kid is 10 and has been going to public school, hasn't been doing the maker stuff, and they're like, okay, I have the next week off. What am I going to do with my kid?

How do they get started? How do they get started? How do they get involved? Well, unplug, first of all. No technology. Yeah. First of all, it's never too late, okay? Never too late. Ever, ever, ever.

A 30-year-old sitting in your basement on his mat. Yeah. Abby's like, I'll let Abby explain to you how she does it. But you as a 10-year-old, let's say, the first thing you do is unplug and, you know, get outside. Outside, you'd be amazed how nature in general just is so fascinating. I was reading on Make, it was Make Magazine, I do believe, a kid who was basically looking up at this tree, saw the spirals of the tree and knew the mathematical equation

and then decided, I'm going to create a technology that follows the sun like these leaves do to harness this. And, you know, 9, 10, 11, 12, I don't remember how old the child was, but, you know, they were given the opportunity. I think so many kids right now are not given the opportunity. They are put in front of a screen of some sort. And that screen is a white noise. There was an NPR, I don't know, something on the radio, and they were talking about the fact

that cities were so light, you know, light pollution everywhere. And I thought about that and the metaphor of not being able to see the stars and not being able to navigate. That applies to our real world too. And these kids that are 10 years old are going to surprise the heck out of you in ways that you cannot possibly imagine giving them you know one of my favorite tools is actually a watercolor pencil it's a pencil it looks like a color pencil you color with it and then you take a paintbrush and just put water over it and watching the colors blend. The kids think that's freaking magic. And you look at that and you say, okay, soldering, for instance, you know, once you teach them how to solder and, you know, we have lots of STEM-oriented stuff,

but all the art and music has been canceled, you know. We don't have a budget for that. Well, you know, the same soldering that you would need for a breadboard, you can make a fine piece of jewelry. You know, it's one of those things that we have to think outside of the box and say, well, what translates from this to this? And, you know, I was talking to you before about cursive. In the Common Core, they don't have cursive writing. Unless you have a fantastic teacher, you're not required to learn cursive. Well, that's a bloody shame because—

Because I hated cursive. Well, you know what the problem is, is that cursive by nature, it's not just the courtesy of fine penmanship. It's the way that the letters connect. First of all, how you hold a pencil, fine motor skills. And then how you connect those letters is the same kind of thinking and the neurological pathways that you need in order to think about coding and how to think about engineering. It's a process. And if those kids have never been exposed to it, guess what? You can't think about that higher level thinking that you're trying to draw from them. You know, the metalworking project that we did, they're throwing kids in the deep end of the ocean saying, here's a wonderful 3D printer. The kids are only learning the fact that they have to push

a button to turn it on. They download something from Thingiverse, right? But are they teaching the kid how to build something new? No. It's point, click, point, click, point, click. So, you take that 10-year-old and you say, guess what? We're going to do something totally out of the ordinary. I'm going to give you a bar of Dove soap, and I'm going to give you a butter knife, and I want you to carve me a duck. Kid's like, dude, I'm going to make the biggest mess ever, and it's going to be freaking awesome. And he'll come back with the best duck that floats that, you know, Monty Python would be jealous, you know, it's like, it will float, you know, but that's the kind of thing.

A duck. Abby is going to recite Monty Python. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry ahead of time for all of your listeners. But it's the same kind of thing. I'm going to give the mic to Abby and you can ask her as a 10 year old, you know, what her favorite things she did. I mean, because I'll tell you, you'd be surprised if you give a kid, you know, she's 11 now, she's going to correct me. But if you give a kid the opportunity, they're going to astound you and um i think you have to allow them to have permission to make a total goof up um or not but um i do like i like the kits that have been coming out lately um that require the kids to think and own the box a little bit more um not the traditional ones that you'd find at a big box store or something like that some of the makers have come up with some fantastic stuff that you know add a fruit spark fun

they're engaging these kids and if the kids are already wanting to look at videos on youtube and everything else once again tell them to be ruthless with their time you know unplug everything else have them write down those, you know, instructions and stuff ahead of time, and then learn the carpentry, take a bag of nails, pound your thumb, you know, do those kinds of things. Kids, especially boys, it's kind of hard. Brick and mortar schools are geared towards girls. I know that sounds awful, but girls like to write letters. They like to doodle. They like to do all that stuff. Boys, boys like to bounce up and down and blow stuff up. And they don't make potato guns in fourth grade, which is such a shame because every kid needs a potato gun. Backyard ballistics should be on

every single parent's bookcase. And, you know, PVC pipe, got to have an end of sub high of that, you know, let the kids doof around with that. They'll go on to Instructables. That's one of the other things I forgot to tell you guys too. Our kids are required to pick a project from Instructables every week. I don't care what it is. They have to build something. And sometimes the stuff that they pick, I just cringe. Because I'm like, seriously?

Abby picked her Halloween costume from Instructables. She built Groot. So, you know, and the boys backed her play, which was really awesome. But that's the thing. You know, it can start small like that. Just pick a project, one, and do it as a family. Make it a commitment. Go over to Home Depot or how the kids call it depot depot and parje

despot we do that too i know right but you know our local ace hardware store they know our kids by like name and it's pretty sad i need chain link and i need this and i need that and half the time these guys are our kids accomplices you know they're like oh my gosh you could totally do this this mess you know old scutters talking about what to blow up and the other thing i would recommend is um doing things like i don't know if you've ever heard of gashwashes it's g-i-s-h-w-e or no w-h-e-s It's like the greatest international scavenger hunt the world has ever seen. And they only do it in August. It's like a charity event. And they give you some random, random, random things. Like this year I had to make a portrait of Iron Man using salt and pepper. It was scary. But I mean, getting out of your comfort zone with a team of random people, that's another thing.

You know, dare yourself to meet new people and to do stuff that you didn't think possible. I know that sounds kind of strange, too. But I'll let Abby talk to you about 10-year-old stuff because her mind moves a little bit different than mine and the stuff that I would let her do, well, I have let her do, I should say, might not be typical parent stuff, but she'll give you an earful. So what projects have you liked best that you've done? Well, I think Groot was probably one of the coolest projects that I've done. That was fun to make, and you couldn't walk around very well in it, but it was still amazing. I think that the zipline was another good one. That was a very nice idea.

Oh, I didn't technically make this one but um the in maker fair i think it was san francisco yeah san francisco maker fair but they had a uh led um fashion show like a wearable tech fashion show and i think three or four i can't remember exactly how many i think it was three or four but the models had they were amputees and they were missing legs or arms and they had the prosthetics as 3d printed and they lit up and i thought that was very cool what are you going to choose for your instructable next week um probably something along the lines of a skirt that lights up because I saw I saw a uh sparkle skirt thingy like like glitter, cool, that mom hates.

And it was on a magazine, and it used a floral and neon pixels from Adafruit, and I wanted to work on that because that sounded cool. Finish your midterms first. Mom's in the background saying I have to finish school on midterms and stuff that I don't

want to do so winter break you're gonna go back mom says winter break I'm going to do that um yeah okay so what about maker areas you don't care for are there any I don't think so. I think that any maker area that I can think of, I've done and I liked it. It's sort of, if you approach information in the right way, you find most information has some wonderfulness about it. I think so, that any kind of technology or making anything, it always has its own uniqueness about it. What project did you work on that was hard to do and didn't work out? Mom's in the background saying solder clock, which I agree with her. That did not turn out. That was a mess.

So what's the solder clock? Yeah, what's the solder clock? The solder clock was basically an attempt at making a watch kind of thing. It was pretty cool, but it was kind of like a miniature watch thing that it didn't really turn out, I think, mostly because I sucked at soldering at the time. And it was very difficult to do because, yeah, emotional stuff. Would you do it again? I probably would attempt it again, yes. Just once I figure out how soldering works better.

So why did you choose it? I think I just saw it and it looked amazing because it had glitter and sparkly stuff and shiny crow. So I think mostly it just looked cool. And I thought it wouldn't be too difficult, but it would also be a very good learning experience. And it was just not in the way that I hoped it would be. How important is it to learn hand building and crafting before mechanized? I know your mom was very much a proponent of more hands things, but how do you feel about it? I think it's cool because the projects that she has us do are more to get us used to what exactly, like for the metal embossing, that was to get us used to how exactly a 3D printer works. Because it's hard to kind of think about how this machine can make a spool of just plastic into a war machine guy or a charm

or something of that sort, or doll shoes in my case. But I think it's very hard to picture how exactly that would work. And I don't think kids that use these have enough hands-on experience with exactly how it's working. All they do is just say, oh, there is this really cool guy on Thingiverse and I want to make it. And all they have to do is just download it to the 3D printer and make it. There's no hands-on experience for them to do. That makes sense, although I don't know how to get from starting embossing to designing 3D things. There's a bit of a gap there.

But that's okay, that's where the learning is. Yes. All right, I think we are about out of time. Christopher, do you have final questions for Abby or for Sarah? I have one for Sarah, but we can... Okay, I can give it back to mom. Well, okay. That was quick.

Go ahead. Chris had a question. So we're going to be talking about FIRST Robotics in a couple of weeks, and you mentioned that earlier. What sort of things should we talk about and ask the guest about? Well, our FIRST Robotics team is actually unique at Kettering University. We're a makerspace. We have eight teams under one roof. Kettering actually built it specifically we're a STEM magnet or this, that, and the other thing. But by and large, and this is an interesting thing, for our kids, there is no STEM robotic team for our kids. No FIRST team because they're hack schoolers or homeschoolers.

Traditionally, FIRST robotics teams come from one specific school. You know, they're a brick and mortar team. And if you are a homeschooler or a hack schooler, you might be in that school district, but you're at their mercy as to whether or not they'll let you on the team. So when you're talking about it, really drive home the point, I think, that kids that learn untraditionally, they have amazing opportunities. A lot of homeschooling groups have created their own FIRST Robotics teams and getting connected with those because there are so many amazing opportunities through FIRST Robotics to learn. Like for our kids, Abby is not technically old enough to be on the team.

We call her a pup. We've got a handful of sixth, seventh, and eighth graders that are really misplaced because they love robotics. They like engineering. They like to code. They like to do all these things. They all know how to pilot, but there's no place for them to go. So getting those kids involved with those teams, they kind of tag along and whatnot. But really encourage, especially moms and dads, with our team specifically, it's really kind of unique. Michigan is actually building another first center on the other side of the state in Grand Rapids. I know Arizona University has them. A lot of universities are looking at it going, wow, if we have initiated kids that really, really want to learn this stuff, we're going to invite them. And we're going to let them on these teams.

Because you learn not only the electronics and the circuitry and the coding, but you also learn, you know, how to build this thing. You have to learn how to weld. You have to learn how to do all those things too um and they learned other things like professional grace or gracious professionalism and things like that so um when you do talk about it um they have the build that starts i think on the 9th of january where they you know release you know the challenge for the year. And it's a big deal. These kids are making friends for life. Our kids are a little bit different because they're already used to networking because the whole world is their classroom. So first robotics for them is just an opportunity to, you know, connect with other geekseks and our school just happens to be or our team

just happens to be from 17 different schools so it's kind of different that way but um that's what I would say I think FIRST Robotics is just an amazing program I am beyond thrilled just even as a you know as a mom that is an innocent bystander sometimes i just this is our first year being involved and it's it's an incredible experience i really really recommend people to explore those things go seek them out in your local communities well that is one of the reasons we're going to be talking about it wahoo you have some amazing guests, I'll just tell you. To be in this roster of awesome, holy smokes, Batman, I feel like

Charlie Bucket and just won the golden ticket. You know, it's like, it's awesome. I'm always pleased that wonderful people are willing to talk to us for a little while. Oh, you have an incredible group and you have an incredible vision, too, so I really appreciate you doing that.

Thank you. You're welcome. Well, I think we're going to close up. Why don't I ask you for your last thoughts and then we'll hand it over to Abby and ask her. All right. Well, my last thoughts would be transfer your skills. Transfer your skills. That's my closing thought is that if you've got a skill to share, use it because the world needs your voice. They need doers of did and crazy amazing and that we get to play with more or vast so um that would be my my going away and making makers in general um just do that do that seek opportunities to lift other people up using the skills that you have so as for abby i have no idea what hers will be,

but I thank you ahead of time. So here's Ab. Hi, Abby. So do you have any last thoughts you'd like to leave us with? Not really. Any advice you have for people thinking about starting a project with their kids this uh this season i think that if you want to you use what you got on hand i guess in a way that you can teach yourself whatever you feel like teaching yourself because

nowadays there's things like youtube and it's probably the best thing i've ever used in my entire life and there's no excuse not to you have no excuse not to teach yourself how to sew not to teach yourself how to solder because Because everything you would need is on the internet because that can totally be trusted. All right. I think that'll do. My guest has been Sarah Hudson of Serendipitous Designs, and her daughter, Abigail Hudson, Young Maker Extraordinaire. Thank you for listening. Thank you also to Christopher for producing and co-hosting. Of course, thank you to Sarah and Abby for being here for us.

And if any of you listeners would like to talk to them or to us, hit the contact link on Embedded FM or send an email, show at Embedded FM. My computer's battery is about to die, so I'm going to have to go through this final thought fairly quickly. It is from JK Rowling. One can never have enough socks, said Dumbledore. Another Christmas has come and gone, and I didn't get a single pair. People will insist on giving me books.

Embedded FM is an independently produced radio show People will insist on giving me books.